Traditional Display Advertising Plays Its Part in Industrial B2B: Blog 1 of 4

Submitted by Kaitlyn Kraus on Tue, 2018-07-24 07:59

Traditional Display Advertising Plays Its Part in Industrial B2B: Blog 1 of 4

Kaitlyn Kraus

Paid digital advertising is a big, complex space. With thousands of marketing and advertising technology providers involved, there are myriad options from which to choose. That means running an effective digital advertising campaign can be challenging. And if you think that’s hard, it’s even harder for the consumers of these ads to take them all in. According to the Huffington Post, a typical internet user sees more than 11,000 ads per month. If yours shows up just a few times, it better be good — and relevant.

You’ll need to understand your options, which is why we produced An Industrial Marketer’s Guide to Digital Advertising. The guide provides a summary of four categories of digital advertising: traditional display, display network, paid search and social media advertising.

This blog provides a quick summary of traditional display. For a more complete analysis with additional statistics and advice, download the paper here.

What Is Traditional Display Advertising?

For this discussion, traditional display advertising refers to banners, skyscrapers, leaderboards and other rich media you see on websites. Advertisers place these ads directly with online publications. Traditional display ads combine text, images, video and sometimes audio to convey a message. In that regard, it’s a lot like print. An advertiser uses data from a website property owner to determine if the audience type, size and engagement behaviors make sense for their campaign. Rates are negotiated with the website owner.

Some Stats on Traditional Display Advertising

Frankly, it’s hard to get excited about click-through rates (CTR) for traditional display advertising. Why? Leaderboard and skyscraper ads only earn about 0.04 percent CTR on average. You can find discrete breakdowns for different ad types, trends by geography and much more from Smart Insights.

Can Traditional Display Work?

Driving a direct response from your traditional display advertising can be difficult. The stats don’t lie. But the good news is that publishers recognize these limitations, so they’re getting creative. What do they offer that you probably don’t have? An audience with specific interests that might align with what you’re offering. Don’t limit your thinking to display ads. Talk with your ad rep about the unique programs they’ve developed which generate leads and engagement beyond the leaderboard. Examples include:

Webinars

Email distributions

Newsletter sponsorships

Content promotions

Special listings

Ask the publication how you can benefit from their developed audiences. One might look a lot like yours.

Our next blog (Part 2) will cover display network advertising, including programmatic approaches such as retargeting and account-based marketing. But if you can’t wait to learn more, download the entire paper now.